in iraq and afghanistan, they were utilized fairly regularly. here is why this is so different. the u.s. does not control the air space over ukraine. the u.s. does not have combat forces in ukraine. this is another country s war, another country s capital where the u.s. has limited to no military assets in the country itself. that s what a small team at the white house, the pentagon and the secret service were grappling with as they tried to put together this trip over intensive preparations that scaled a couple of months. it s worth noting, abby, the president made clear that he was itching to travel to ukraine. he had seen european counterparts make the trip, the first lady made the trip, top administration officials had made the trip, but the president had constantly been rebuffed, being told from a security perspective it wasn t something they could or should put together. those risks certainly haven t changed. we see the fact that there is still artillery attacks or shelling in al
screws to volodymyr vulensky to the infamous phone call that led to his impeachment. remember they re waiting on the weapons, trump responded i would like you to do us a favor, though. and the favor was producing a piece of disinformation. that was the deliverable. that was the point of it. didn t care about what the investigation found. he just wants the announcement. announce you re investigating. when that plan failed, guess what? undeterred trump stalked the same strategy. constant floating theories of voter fraud and mail fraud in philadelphia where there just happened to be black voters and then of course intensifying after. trying to rerun the same play he ran with the ukrainian president. this time trying to rerun it with his own acting attorney general when he comes to him and says as simply as he possibly can, just say the election was
agencies do not collect against the president of the united states or u.s. officials, but we do have this need to understand how the russians are going to take advantage of whatever mr. trump might have said. and so this is the strange presidency where he actually does these things on tv. and during the campaign, he asked the russians to steal hillary clinton s e-mail and provide them in effect to the trump campaign or to leak them to the american public. because he did it on tv, the republicans defense was, oh, it s a joke. i want to look at another piece of video. there is no sound to this. this is vladimir putin and donald trump. they re at the g-20 dinner in germany. and trump is highlighted there on one part of the screen. putin s down there. there s this signal that he gives to putin and we re going to rerun it because we look at that and i m wondering if you had picked this up as some kind of intelligence, that the american government picked up in a russian restaurant of two
because he did it on tv, the republicans defense was, oh, it s a joke. i want to look at another piece of video. there is no sound to this. this is vladimir putin and donald trump. they re at the g-20 dinner in germany. and trump is highlighted there on one part of the screen. putin s down there. there s this signal that he gives to putin and we re going to rerun it because we look at that and i m wondering if you had picked this up as some kind of intelligence, that the american government picked up in a russian restaurant of two people giving that kind of signal, and you know that these people are in positions of trust by their governments to essentially an adversarial position. i mean, what do you think you re looking at when you see that? it really is quite curious. i think it just reflects that there is a special relationship between those two individuals. and if any previous president
security clearance? that s it. there s no difference between administrations when you come in from one, they rerun it. the reason they grant them for 5 years as it s a very extensive background where they check your contacts, their places of residence, your employment, they go into the field, they do a lot of that work and then you are required to maintain updates to that clearance. they re-adjudicated every five years. that occurred in this case and now the department of defense is looking into it. reporter: they accuses this white house of a cover-up. what s your reaction question marks before i was taken aback because they are frankly not true. the department of defense was the issuing agency for general flynn s ff 86. we refer them to the department of defense that owned and issued his security clearance and they got a copy of it. that s how the system works. documents that he requested, he received. with all due respect, he got the